Chadli & Chiriches to Southampton

Tottenham are continuing their efforts to offload Vlad Chiriches, this time offering him to Southampton together with Nacer Chadli as potential makeweights in an attempt to secure the signing of Morgan Scheiderlin.

Romanian 24-year-old Vlad Chiriches cost Spurs £8.5 million (€10.68m) from Steaua Bucharest last summer and Belgian 25-year-old Nacer Chadli cost £7 million (€8.79m) from Dutch side FC Twente. Both have been offered as players Southampton might need, both together could be useful considering the number of players Southampton have lost.

The situation appears to be that they failed to give any assurances to Mauricio Pochettino and his players, even going so far as to refuse to answer their calls. Hardly surprising the Argentinian decided Southampton had moved the goalposts on his project and left and equally unsurprising that the players therefore decided the vision they had been sold was no longer a target.

Adam Lallana, Ricky Lambert, Luke Shaw, Calum Chambers, Dejan Lovren have all left, Dani Osvaldo is about to and Morgan Schneiderlin wishes to join them in departing. Those players need to be replaced, at the moment the club is faced with using players that their own fans say aren't good enough for the Premier League.

They are staring at 8th to a relegation battle in one summer and that lies squarely at the feet of the hierarchy.

You can't blame Southampton for putting yet another ridiculous fee on a player totally out of proportion to his footballing worth, he has no commercial marketing value which is what raises the price for the top marketable talents

Gareth Bale is the draw for Real Madrid on the North American tour, not Ronaldo now. No doubt he took the penalty rather than any other player on the pitch again because of the commercial impact, a marketable commodity scoring is always going to raise the players and the clubs profile. Real Madrid didn't just pay a world record fee for his football ability, no footballer is worth that sort of money for football alone.

However Southampton have managed to put one over on both Liverpool and Manchester United with the size of transfer fee so why not try it again.

Both Chadli and Chiriches have some ability, maybe Southampton is a club that could bring it out, but then again maybe the owners will see it as a way to save face. Protestations that a player won't leave happen all the time and are often meaningless, if a player wants to leave he usually does, an unhappy player isn't much use having in a dressing room.

I have no knowledge that Schneiderlin is unhappy but his recent tweet that was widely reported would suggest he is rather angry. The club statements say he will a Southampton player at the start of the season and he may well be, but the window doesn't shut then.

He could still move after the first game with Southampton then claiming to have secured an excellent deal for the club and all the other PR soundbites they go with any transfer these days.

From a purely Tottenham point of view it would be good to get both off the books. Selling two non-home grown players who have failed to impress releases places in the squad for others. Sell Kaboul and Assou-Ekotto and the situation is then a healthy one for the next window or next summer.

Offering options on various players may help but offering a couple of players may be a better carrot.